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Zen and the art of Apache maintenance

Apache recently held a week-end “infrathon” to sweep the dust out of the corners, squash a few old bugs, drink a wee bit of ale (and maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit) and get their hands dirty with the Zen of maintaining their infrastructure. MadPenguin.org crashed the party in search of the secrets of getting into the “zone” while peeking into the grittiest of the nitty gritty of one of the darling projects of open source, Apache.

There's a lot of talk about “community” in the open source world, and learned papers by the hundreds are chasing the mystery of why highly talented hackers give away code for free. But for those of use who don't hack code, maybe we just have to try to sit and stare at a blank wall for an hour or so to experience the “Zen” of something as grinding and nitty gritty as infrastructure maintenance.

Maybe it's sort of like the tedious poses that yoga practitioners do; or the mind-numbing, repetitive training that star athletes engage in; or the hours of relentless practice of top violinists slashing away at their violins. Maybe true beauty can't be bought by the billions of dollars stashed away in Microsoft's banks. Maybe the only way to “get” the Zen of open source community is to hunker down and grind out deadly dull infrastructure maintenance work. Maybe you actually gotta “feel the burn” to get the high...